Suggestion: Dynamic population caps.

frosth.darkomenb16_ESO · September 2014

I'm not using complex concepts, yet you don't seem to grasp them.
So I feel I need to write essays just to spell out everything.
I'll write short sentences, I'll let you ask questions if there is something you don't understand.

I'm saying that your caps won't work because you will still end up being outnumbered either through attrition or getting ganged upon.
At best it will just slow down the effect, but it doesn't solve the issue.

The only way to keep population balanced at all time is to have the overall campaign population balanced, and to do that you need to give people a reason to be part of a campaign even when they aren't part of the winning side.
Activity, AP and XP gains work to motivate guesting and switching campaigns and actually balance the team.

Your concept of "you could just join another campaign" doesn't work.
They won't use guesting that way:
The few times I've seen guesting being used by organized groups is to go farm ap on a campaign dominated by our faction in order to use it to get some victories on our losing campaign.
People will not leave their home for a place where they would be losing.
They wouldn't gain any buffs from their efforts, and they would do more ap in a winning campaign. They'll just do PvE while queueing or play another game.

They won't change their home;
Again, there are no reasons to switch away from a campaign where you are winning, even if you can't log in, the buffs are worth enough.
And there are no reasons to remain in a campaign where you are losing when you could join a buff campaign.

Sharee · September 2014

frosth.darkomenb16_ESO wrote: »

I'm saying that your caps won't work because you will still end up being outnumbered either through attrition or getting ganged upon.

I will not be outnumbered if the enemy does not have any higher numbers!

Ganged upon = / = outnumbered. Outnumbered is when the enemy has the population indicator showing a lock, while yours is showing 1 bar. Examples:
http://imgur.com/TGiCul7
http://imgur.com/cDKXQR3

At best it will just slow down the effect, but it doesn't solve the issue.

It does solve the issue. Enemy cannot have population more than 10% higher than me = enemy cannot be pop locked while i have 1 bar.

People will not leave their home for a place where they would be losing.

If someone is so determined to stay in a campaign that even facing huge queues won't make him move to a campaign where he would be losing, then mere AP bonus will not make him move either.

Tintinabula · September 2014

PvP isn't always about winning, frost. Its about enjoying the experience of a fair fight. If i lose and the fight was fair I usually come back for more so that I can learn.

There is no learning curve for being outnumbered 10 -1. There is no buff there is no game there is no skill that allows one person to beat ten people.

Currently AD outnumbers EP at the very least 10-1 so regardless of our armor ..regardless of skills..regardless of game play we will statistically always die..and to add insult to injury not necessarily die to a better player but to their numbers. This is not fun..this is not a game..(unless you're a masochist).

I would bet that by the time this current 30 day campaign is over if ZOS doesn't do something "quick"; They're gonna be worrying about losing AD subscriptions on top of the EP and DC who will be making a mass exodos out of PvP cause wheres the fun in zerging no one?

There is none. Being king of the world aint that great when you're the last man on earth.

Agrippa_Invisus · September 2014

I have a feeling that frosth may be arguing disingenuously. Either he is benefiting from the current system and doesn't want it to change significantly, or he doesn't have a grasp on the issue.

The issue is that gross population imbalances (such as the images Sharee posted) are completely unmanageable for the outnumbered faction. I've seen it over and over. You simply cannot win -- no amount of organization or skill defeats it.

In a no win situation, you will not have an underdog faction anymore. They will stop playing the game. I watched EP and AD bail out of Bloodthorn NA for three months until the action only happened on the weekends with 5 of 7 days spent with a blue map. All due to off hours population disparity where 2-3 bars of DC would roll the map without fail.

Hopeless situations breed despair and the players pay to play this game. They do not spend their money to feel despair, but to have fun.

Currently on Thornblade NA the map is utterly yellow, with AD even recapturing Farragut from EP even though there was nothing in the Ghartok scroll temple. The population stands at Locked AD, 2 bars EP, and 1 bar DC. AD outnumbers both over factions combined. Even in the evenings, when the population evens out (and AD suffers a horrendous queue timer), the AD guilds get to benefit directly by sitting in their keeps and farming the ever loving heck out of EP/DC who are just trying to reclaim lost territory and their own scrolls.

Last night the AD emp was dethroned, all scrolls returned home to their respective temples, and the map was reasonably balanced (aside from Roebeck/Alessia being non-yellow, necessary for the dethroning). Today, when checked, all that work was shot in 2-3 hours worth of population disparity during the early US day period.

Guilds have already been abandoning ship from Thornblade NA due to this. It's a lot of work to keep at it like that day after day. The fix is to balance the populations -- forcibly.

You want to population stack, you need to understand the balance choice you are making is a poor one. Queues enforce that. When people know EP/DC get right into Thornblade NA and AD has an hour queue, rerolling will begin. Or they'll switch to a server that AD are needed on.

Honfold · September 2014

I think locking off people from a server until more enemies join is a bad idea. It is essentially punishing anyone playing in off hours. I have had a couple nights when I am on at 4am EST and DC is at 1 bar and AD is pop locked. Requiring all of those AD players to play another campaign away from friends/guilds would only be frustrating. I have made the suggestion below in a couple of other threads and I think it would work well. Let me know what you think.

I agree that the point system is not working right now, but I do not see them getting rid of it. I think that points an alliance earn at any given time should be determined by the balance of populations.

Example:

AD/DC/EP all have 1 bar of population, then they all earn 100% of the potential points per tick.

AD has 2 bars of pop to DC and EP's 1 bar, AD earns 75% of the potential points.

DC has 3 bars of pop to AD and EP's 1 bar, DC earns 50% of the potential points.

EP is locked pop to AD and DC's 1 bar, EP earns 25% of the potential points.

If an alliance has 1 bar of pop to another alliances pop lock then I am not sure if they should be given bonuses to points, like an additional 50-100 pt "underdog bonus", or something along those lines.

I think that this would help facilitate an even distribution of the player base across two or three campaigns since being pop locked could be detrimental. Also this would not specifically target players who only play during the graveyard shift."

I think this could work well enough. It isn't perfect, but I think it would help with population balance.

Who ever nightcaps a map is still being rewarded with keeps. So when the populations start to build up, whoever nighcapped does have the strategic advantage.

Agrippa_Invisus · September 2014

Honfold wrote: »

I think locking off people from a server until more enemies join is a bad idea. It is essentially punishing anyone playing in off hours. I have had a couple nights when I am on at 4am EST and DC is at 1 bar and AD is pop locked. Requiring all of those AD players to play another campaign away from friends/guilds would only be frustrating. I have made the suggestion below in a couple of other threads and I think it would work well. Let me know what you think.

I agree that the point system is not working right now, but I do not see them getting rid of it. I think that points an alliance earn at any given time should be determined by the balance of populations.

Example:

AD/DC/EP all have 1 bar of population, then they all earn 100% of the potential points per tick.

AD has 2 bars of pop to DC and EP's 1 bar, AD earns 75% of the potential points.

DC has 3 bars of pop to AD and EP's 1 bar, DC earns 50% of the potential points.

EP is locked pop to AD and DC's 1 bar, EP earns 25% of the potential points.

If an alliance has 1 bar of pop to another alliances pop lock then I am not sure if they should be given bonuses to points, like an additional 50-100 pt "underdog bonus", or something along those lines.

I think that this would help facilitate an even distribution of the player base across two or three campaigns since being pop locked could be detrimental. Also this would not specifically target players who only play during the graveyard shift."

I think this could work well enough. It isn't perfect, but I think it would help with population balance.

Who ever nightcaps a map is still being rewarded with keeps. So when the populations start to build up, whoever nighcapped does have the strategic advantage.

This will not work.

They already give an underdog bonus on the scoreboard. It doesn't matter if you don't have many or any keeps at all. You still earn next to nothing. You'd have to dominate the map, and that's not going to happen 1-2 bars vs Locked.

Honfold · September 2014

When I saw AD hold everything in Thornblade at 4am est they were earning, I think, 398pts per tick. So if they only earn 25% of that, let just round to 100, then I think the underdog bonus I suggested may even be too high.

Tintinabula · September 2014

Its odd listening to an AD talk about frustration and being punished when that's exactly how EP and DC feel.

frosth.darkomenb16_ESO · September 2014

@Tintinabula‌
Then go say that to all those that chose to be in a buff campaign.
Whether we like to admit it or not, we all play to win, and if you want to make people happy, they need to always win something.
Also, for many, AvA is just a means to an end: be more efficient in PvE.
They get into PvP just to defend their advantages. Going the cap route means they don't even have to bother loging in anymore.

Population imbalance is an issue, but dynamic caps aren't a solution.

@Sharee‌
See, this is why I feel compeled to write essays...

The pop advantage may start at 110%, but it won't stay this way.

Admitting equal skills, 10% advantage means that the higher pop should win more often. In most case having an additional group to take on more objectives at the same time.
And as I explained, a higher total pop faction can also field a higher number of better quality players. (10% of 200 is less than 10% of 2000)

The resulting loses means that the lowest faction suffers attrition. Players get frustrated and log off. However, unless you kick players at random, the winning faction has no game related reasons to log off.
So what started as a 10% advantage will end up being much more, and getting progressively worse. Up to pop locked against 1 bar.
This advantage will remain until the night where the night shift will be enough to defend whatever was captured during the time of advantage.

And as the lowest faction, you are outpopped by individual enemy factions (remember, they have a minimum of 10% more) but as you are an easier target, members of the two other factions will tend to fight you more as well. This counts as outnumbered. because instead of having to fight 50% of an enemy faction with your 50% for that front, you would end up fighting 60-70%.

You really need to take a step back and try to get some perspective.
Try to focus on the why rather than the what.
The issue isn't that it is possible to outnumber but that it is more profitable.

Tintinabula · September 2014

make one campaign ans there will be NO BUFF campaigns..problem solved

Sharee · September 2014

frosth.darkomenb16_ESO wrote: »

The pop advantage may start at 110%, but it won't stay this way.

Admitting equal skills, 10% advantage means that the higher pop should win more often. In most case having an additional group to take on more objectives at the same time.
And as I explained, a higher total pop faction can also field a higher number of better quality players. (10% of 200 is less than 10% of 2000)

The resulting loses means that the lowest faction suffers attrition. Players get frustrated and log off. However, unless you kick players at random, the winning faction has no game related reasons to log off.
So what started as a 10% advantage will end up being much more, and getting progressively worse. Up to pop locked against 1 bar.

A side might lose a player here and there during a single night because he becomes frustrated and log, not 80% of it's population.

Agrippa_Invisus wrote: »

I have a feeling that frosth may be arguing disingenuously. Either he is benefiting from the current system and doesn't want it to change significantly, or he doesn't have a grasp on the issue.

I believe it's the former, tho i was reluctant to put it so bluntly. But, yeah.

purgation · September 2014

All these issues have occurred in other games. Chronic faction imbalance is a game killer. Some solutions work, others do not.

Dynamic caps are not a complete solution, but one measure that would help.

Limiting the total number of campaigns is another important strategy... unfortunately human nature is factions will tend to sort into campaigns they are winning over time, and if you have adequate capacity for the entire active player base across 3 servers, you will most likely end-up with 3 monochromatic campaigns.

In the end, it really boils down to incentives: Players should be rewarded for succeeding in play against opposition. Rewarding PVDoor is bad. Forcing players to sit in a queue if they want to pile in on a campaign that is already tilted heavily in favor of one faction is a GOOD thing.

Maybe we could pair dynamic caps with dynamic campaign switch costs -- flipping to a server where your faction is chronically outmatched is free, switching to a server where your faction frequently has the largest queues should be VERY costly.

All I really know is that Warhammer, the closest recent analog had all these issues. People, on average, try to pile on to the winning side; but at the same time people quickly get bored of one-sided play. "Forcing" players to play in competitive campaigns -- particularly if they are on the losing side -- is unfortunately critical to the overall game working.

purgation · September 2014

frosth.darkomenb16_ESO wrote: »

@Tintinabula‌....

You really need to take a step back and try to get some perspective.
Try to focus on the why rather than the what.
The issue isn't that it is possible to outnumber but that it is more profitable.

Dynamic caps are one part of a solution. At least in my experience, the dynamic you suggest is less important than you think. Players join and leave the game all the time for various reasons... If one faction snowballs a bit at a point in time THATS FINE. The issue is chronic imbalances.

Tintin's observations are based on the current experience on Thornblade:

3 factions played and competed during prime-time NA hours, all was good. But then NA goes to sleep, and Asia Pacific... who all purposefully piled into a single faction... take over the map while the other factions are asleep. This gives that faction an unbeatable advantage, regardless how poor they perform during prime time NA.

I do agree with you on one point - - it's about incentives, but it often doesn't work to rely on a single incentive to achieve an overall game design goal.... and the point of caps is NOT to prevent imbalance from ever occuring... the point is to give an incentive (avoiding possibly very long queues) to not pile onto one campaign/faction in a given time slot when other options are available.

Comet201 · September 2014

On NA servers, there's a late night group of EP who night cap one server, and a late night group of AD who take over a different one, dynamic population caps would force them to fight each other or not "pvp" at all

Tbh its not really "pvp" they're doing anyways, its more PvWall and PvGuards vs a very few players who stay up late at night

not that I want to punish factions that have more players, but if balance is not made, then eventually you will only have 1 faction playing in pvp the other factions will get tired of dethroning your emp/taking back their keeps every morning, it gets old quick.

Maybe incentives to make more players from the lower population faction come out to help @ late hours will help, but lets face it, what really needs to happen is more players to join the faction w/ less population, which means this game needs to bring in more players and thats just not happening right now, so need a more immediate solution before the problem gets out of hand and eventually pvp really starts to die out

Keron · September 2014

I have written some on this in other topics, but I feel it may also be beneficial to this discussion here, as food for thought if nothing else.

I admit that I do not see the advantages of the dynamic pop cap outweigh its disadvantages. The one thing that gets ignored completely is the fact that the campaigns we have here are not identical. We have different durations with different rewards.

The argument that "if you want to go into your factions buff-campaign, you have to accept large queues. If you don't want to sit in a queue, you have to change campaigns" is valid only, if the campaigns are similar in all aspects except for populations.

It fails completely if you sit in a queue because you want to play the 30-day-campaign and your faction is the one owning it. Yes, you can change to another one, but then you'd have to give up on the reason that made you prefer the 30 day variant. And yes, there are reasons why you'd want to chose 30 day over 14 day other than "winning team joining", but they mainly concern the so-called casual players with external time constraints.

Furthermore, we have two issues here, one being personal rewards and the other being faction rewards. One of the reasons people flock to a specific campaign is the faction board standings. If a faction is way ahead of others, people of that faction tend to join in as was explained by other posters above.

If all factions would have a close run-in for lead on the leader board, the effect of population stacking would be limited - the influx of the winning faction is smaller and the outflux of the losing faction as well.

While I kind of agree with @frosth.darkomenb16_ESO (oh, do get rid of that dot in your nick!) that incentive is preferable over punitions in regards to player motivation, I think that this also depends on how close to effecting you personally it gets.

Let's be honest, coloring the map during off-hours does not net you that much personal AP. It is only beneficial for the faction score board. The only thing that you reap from it is the pvp bonuses that having emp/all scrolls/all keeps gives you.

Hence, my idea would be twofold: Remove these advantages by using population difference to reduce faction point gain, down to zero if one faction has as much or more players than both other factions together and at that point make it impossible for an emperor to be crowned, scrolls to be taken or (that's a new point as outcome of following all the discussions here) bonuses to be applied.

Don't change pop caps, don't change individual players AP gains or rank advance, put the penalty on the faction instead of the individual. Make the individual aware that by having achieved all the bonuses/scrolls/captures during even pop distribution will net him way more than doing it during off hours, where it could be that he reaps zero benefits.

It's not a real punishment, it's more of a withholding of incentives.

Secondly, if you want to reward players of a low pop faction, make it so that the bonus for owning home keeps (and only this bonus, not the other ones) gets increased for the one or both underdog factions as it is decreased for the overpopulated faction.

Again, do not change anything in regards to direct personal gains (AP and rank advance). As long as personal gains are similar no matter in which condition you play and the faction bonuses do reflect the pop imbalance, you WILL have a self regulating system, because the only reason to have a buff campaign will be removed.

Everyone, please take into consideration in your argumentation that it is also important to remove the incentives for wrong behaviour (in this case buff campaigns).

frosth.darkomenb16_ESO · September 2014

I am part of DC on Haderus EU.
We barely reach 2 bars at prime time.
As far as I know, there wasn't one week where AD didn't have at least double the campaign points.
I need this problem resolved to fully enjoy the game.

That said, I want the issue fixed, not just its symptoms.

In a balanced game, there are no reasons why the night shifts would be wildly different. But in eso, there is: Buff campaigns.

Buff campaigns are an incentive to stack in one faction, and there are no equivalent force to encourage spreading out.
And again, caps are not an incentive but a punitive measure. Learn the difference. To be exact, rewards are positive reinforcement while caps are negative punishment.

For instance, it is far easier to retain players than it is to acquire new ones. Retention is the most important component of growth, as without it, acquisition is just turn over.
This is not real life, we aren't fighting for our lives without a choice, it's just one game amongst thousands.
If you punish players for trying to play, you give them a chance to leave. Simple as that.

To stay on the notion of retention, having reasons to stay in one side, and none in the other creates a feedback loop.
Losing all the time causes people to not log in anymore, because why bother? Yet another feedback loop.
Since we can switch campaigns, this adds to the issue as well.

And caps do not address these points. It is a very narrow minded approach based on an instant observation rather than understanding the pattern.
It's like using earplugs to avoid hearing the flapping noise of a flat tire.
It would eventually lead to 160 people fighting over cyrodiil instead of the 1500 it was designed for. With the smalest faction still getting stomped on and buff campaigns still being a thing.

If you don't understand the concepts of feedback loops and attrition, confuse the carrot and the stick, know nothing of simple behaviorialism or strugle with basic statistics, I can't help you.

But here is some litterature that may:

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3085/behavioral_game_design.php?page=1
Especially the second page and what to do to make players play hard and what to avoid to prevent players quitting.

http://www.sirlin.net/articles/slippery-slope-and-perpetual-comeback.html
On the feedback loops and how to counter them.
Loads of other interesting articles, I recommend the "play to win" book.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sampling_bias
Not a perfect link, but it's the same general idea: Due to the barrier of entry(queueing), the online population has a sampling bias towards dedicated players.
Same thing applies for overall population, as the dedicated players are the one knowing about buff campaigns, winning faction attract/retain them so the proportion of dedicated players is higher there.
Which leads to continued attrition and increase in population difference.

Keron · September 2014

EDIT: added contents to my previous post.

frosth.darkomenb16_ESO · September 2014

Keron wrote: »

EDIT: added contents to my previous post.

My post was not addressed to you, as I didn't notice your reply.
It was more to explain that caps are not a solution.
You also brought great points about the different length/rule sets of campaigns being a factor.

Your solution would most likely work to reduce somme of the effects of buff campaigns and reduce the perceived faction advantages.
It is definitely better than caps, as it at least address the root issue.
However, I'm not certain it would fix the population imbalance issue. After all, winning is still more enjoyable than losing, regardless of buff rewards.
And it would most likely come at a high price of lost motivation.

Players are selfish, a large part of their decision making process is impacted by personal gains. The end of campaign rewards are not sufficient to make players care about overall victory points, so putting the weight on the actual faction will not impact the individual player behaviours much.

You need to make it feel personal to them, and the rewards/punishments need to be immediate and clearly associated to the behaviour you want to impact.

In a way, losing the buffs proportional to population present would somewhat work, but it isn't personal. The player won't feel he's at cause, just that a bunch of morons are negatively affecting him by being on his side/not on the opposite side. The droplet never thinks it's the cause of the tsunami.
What you would be teaching players is that it is not worth fighting/loging in unless very specific conditions are met, conditions mostly out of their hands.

Same for rewarding only holding home keeps. It would encourage players to be over defensive and not pushing for more as they'd benefit the most buffs from the status quo and not actually fighting.
Unchanged faction buffs are great incentives to go beyond, especially if they get unlocked through activity. The players would fight not only to capture the source of the buff, but to earn the activity points necessary to profit from them.

In short, what I would be more beneficial for the game is to teach players that the harder they fight, the more they get rewarded.
You need victory condition incentives (potent buffs you earn by fighting and can encourage some, but not all, to log off to profit from them in PvE)
And you need fighting back incentives (more gains against wining faction)
Both sides should want to continue fighting at all time.

My full proposal is in another thread. If you want to discuss why you don't feel that personal gains would work, then please answer there.
http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/discussion/130109/a-possible-solution-to-population-imbalance
I don't want to derail this thread further as it is about the dynamic cap.

Keron · September 2014

I agree that the discussion should not be derailed too much, but I'll just drop in one more chain of thought before stopping

To quote you, "winning is still more enjoyable than losing regardless of buffs", I would like to rise the point that the perceived winning is a consequence of other things at work.

First is the want for the PvP buffs for whatever purpose (be it difficult PvE encounters or PvP related things like AP farming or something else). This desire usually comes from dedicated players that are able and willing to sacrifice something to achieve it (This is not meant pejoratively!)

Now these dedicated players, that are but a small percentage of overall player base, start with generating a unbalanced environment in a campaign by making it possible to have the desired buffs over extended periods of time.

As a consequence of this, the faction starts to "win", which essentially means leading the score board. Only now it starts to relate directly to pop imbalance, because only now the general, casual player base will start flocking to that campaign thus causing the shift in population.

Now we have finally reached the self accelerating vicious circle that leads to a "buff campaign" status.

Even today, AP farming is completely unrelated to campaign status. I find the statements in The Noore's open letter in regard to AP farming to be very on spot in this regard.

I think that the personal benefit in regards to points gain is even reduced for being in the winning faction on a buff campaign. Hence, I can't completely agree with you that removal of the carrot (pvp buffs in a buff campaign) will solve nothing.

I fear that we are trying to "overly regulate" the pvp environment. One of the very appreciated advantages of a 3 faction setting as opposed to the two faction setting is the unpredictability of this 3-way-fight. The more we regulate, the more we guide into certain directions, the less unpredictability we have.

At the end we may be losing a lot of the fun components just for the sake of regulating things.

Minimizing constraints - only removing what makes up an incentive to create buff campaigns - while retaining an as much unregulated playing field as possible will reap us the most rewarding game experience. And this is why I do not concur with either Frosth or Sharee. Both of their proposals put a too severly restraining corset on players.

frosth.darkomenb16_ESO · September 2014

Keron wrote: »

At the end we may be losing a lot of the fun components just for the sake of regulating things.

Minimizing constraints - only removing what makes up an incentive to create buff campaigns - while retaining an as much unregulated playing field as possible will reap us the most rewarding game experience. And this is why I do not concur with either Frosth or Sharee. Both of their proposals put a too severly restraining corset on players.

Excelent argument.

However, I may have misscomunicated my point.
Removing the carrot will solve some things, but not everything.
My main concern is that it is at too high a cost.
Carrots are a necessary component of making a game meaningful and, in the case of a sub based game, addictive enough to pay every month.
Fighting just for the sake of fighting caused far superior games to become boring. heck, even most fps games now have progression systems nowadays.

Also, incentives aren't the same thing than limitations/regulations.
They are a great way of encouraging behaviors without reducing possibilities, and in my opinion, aren't restraining players at all. It actually does the opposite by giving them new options that weren't viable choices before.

In practice, nothing will prevent a group to attack a weak faction rather than the strongest one. In most cases, it shouldn't even make a difference if the campaign is "balanced" and a tight fight.
The rewards would only take effect in over dominated situations.
Those situations are the critical points at which the vicious cycle could start, and implementing a "silver lining" will prevent it without actually changing the gameplay possibilities.

It's what one of the writers in an article I linked a couple comments back called "catch up mechanics". It doesn't prevent someone from wining, but gives the loser an opportunity to do something about it, or at least still have fun despite losing.

Your comment on 3 factions system is great too, daoc got it right and it is one of the best way to have a healthy RvR. I can't understand why so many games after it went the 2 faction way.
But unfortunately, in ESO, there are no actual incentives to prevent someone from winning. As you said, you can farm AP just as much even when your faction is losing, and it is preferable to attack a faction that is weaker or not much stronger than yours.
It is something we witness in most campaigns, with the underdogs killing each other rather than going after the top dog.

That's why my suggestion is making going after the top dog a viable choice.
Not the only one, as it will always be easier to attack a weaker opponent, but at least, there will be some compensation to taking on a harder fight.

Agrippa_Invisus · September 2014

We can already say, with certainty from past experience, that scoreboard bonuses to underdog factions will not and have not worked to assist. We've had two rounds of 90 day campaigns (one truncated to about a month) and then several rounds of the new shorter campaigns and it does not matter. The "dead" campaigns remained such. The one which had the most activity, Bloodthorn NA, was never even close on the scoreboard (with DC winning by a nearly 400,000 point margin) even with EP/AD receiving the underdog bonuses constantly.

And it's that scoreboard with dictates which campaigns are 'dead' or 'alive'. If the score's tight, the campaign is lively and exciting. Lopsided campaigns generate less and less traffic each day until no one remains except a few die hards.

Presently on Thornblade NA the AD faction flips the entire map to yellow every night. Every single keep and resource (except one, a suicide node at Bloodmayne) is turned yellow -- even the strategically unimportant Dragonclaw. Neither DC or EP have held their scrolls since before the campaign reset. At 8:30am Central US yellow had 2 bars of population, and EP/DC had on the low side of one (with maybe 10-15 players actually being online and in campaign).

Even with that, between them, EP and DC took a combined eleven keeps away from AD. But that work is reset completely as of this morning (I checked). If it wasn't so thoroughly lopsided in the off hours, EP and DC might have a few keeps left by prime time and a similar 11 keep push would dethrone the AD emperor and get scrolls returned home. But nope, 11 keeps puts us right back where we were the next day.

That's where hopelessness is bred and reinforced.

There are a number of yellow guilds that directly benefit from the current situation. They contest every keep capture from Rayles and Farragut on down. They get to farm and farm and farm away, blowing the opposition AP gain out of the water due to constantly being in a defensive situation (knowing the map turns yellow again later in the day), and getting defensive ticks and constantly wiping raids with the help of an Emperor.

This exact same thing happened on Bloodthorn NA v1.0.

There is no amount of positive incentive you can give to EP/DC on Thornblade that helps this situation. The underdog scoreboard bonuses are already a failure -- the map is yellow too much for too long -- and giving AP bonuses to the underdog is at best a consolation prize. You have to succeed to earn that AP. You have to kill the enemy and take/defend the keep. Offense Ticks never live up to the size of their Defensive counterparts.

When you're set up for failure from the start, the underdog starts to flat out quit.

Punitive measures reinforce better behavior. That's the way it is in game and in real life. Exploiting in this game is such a joke precisely because of ZOS's lax enforcement of punitive measures on the playerbase. Exploiting is less prevalent in other games, not because players get a carrot for "playing nice", but because their account is in jeopardy if they fail to adhere to the ToS.

To get the experience to be balanced you have to convince the players to stop all stacking into one faction for an easy win.

Yes, I agree that some carrots can be given out. Give free xp/ap/levels to players who want to switch to the underdog. This will help, but not alleviate the ultimate issue. They can also add faction transfer, much like how WoW has it, to allow quick swaps to underdog factions without needing to re-level a character (and as the game supports every race in every faction already they can do so without race/name changes). Make the faction transfer free to underdogs, but with a large iRL monetary charge ($20-25 USD for example) for switching to the overpopulated faction.

Enforcing good behavior with dynamic queues will correct the issue immediately. If those players want to continue to play in their preferred campaign style they will be forced to re-roll or wait in a queue so that the campaign remains balanced population wise. The players who play in the underdog faction(s) are rewarded by smooth logins and being able to quickly find the action.

Sometimes the stick is needed.

EDIT:

To add -- the other issue is a matter of time.

You only have so much more time before the Cyrodiil maps are dead and empty. When the underdogs have given up and the winners are ruling empty maps.

The dynamic caps fixes the problem right now.

frosth.darkomenb16_ESO · September 2014

The reward only works when it is personal and properly timed with the desired behaviour. And for that, it also needs to be noticeable.

I consider myself a dedicated player, I follow forums, read up on the game and try to generally be well aware of patch notes and future changes on the pts.
And this is the first time I've heard about an underdog bonus.

If I missed it, I expect a large majority of players did as well.
And just as it was the case with the target caps, some features don't have an effect on player behaviours until they are advertised/revealed to them.

The carrot that needs to be used must be visible in the UI. As loading screen tips and when you look at the campaign summary.
The game needs to show the modifiers when attacking the various factions and explain to players what they stand to gain by working for the benefit of their faction.

This sums up to the same argument you made:
To get the experience to be balanced you have to convince the players to stop all stacking into one faction for an easy win.

I also agree on the faction transferts.
Some people may enjoy only the 7 day campaigns and a free faction transfert for winning players would be the only way for them to experience these changes.
But no paying transferts, it would set a bad precedent for paying services on top of the subscription fee.

Also, it should go only one way: from dominating to underdogs.
Perhaps unlock it at the end of a campaign if the previous campaign had one faction with double the points than either one of the other factions.

EDIT on your edit:
it would balance it right now, but it would also accelerate the desertion.
Those caps are reason to logoff, stop caring and eventually unsub, not to act properly.

Keron · September 2014

Agrippa_Invisus wrote: »

Enforcing good behavior with dynamic queues will correct the issue immediately. If those players want to continue to play in their preferred campaign style they will be forced to re-roll or wait in a queue so that the campaign remains balanced population wise. The players who play in the underdog faction(s) are rewarded by smooth logins and being able to quickly find the action.

Alternatively, it forces people to just silently quit and move to another game. Considering the effort involved in re-rolling, I consider this to be the most probable consequence.

Do not forget: Us here on the forums are the minority of players. Most of us are here, because we are invested in this game. The majority is not invested in the game, they "just want to have fun" to say it with Cyndi Laupers' words.

The pop cap, while resolving the issue with pop imbalance immendiately, will kill the game by having casuals leave.

Those players that have chosen EP (or AD or DC) because they identify with the respective faction leader, the story line in that faction, or whatever reason aside from "I win in PvP" do not want to change faction in order to be able to PvP. They stop PvP and then stop the game as soon as PvE doesn't provide motivation enough.

Agrippa_Invisus · September 2014

frosth.darkomenb16_ESO wrote: »

The reward only works when it is personal and properly timed with the desired behaviour. And for that, it also needs to be noticeable.

I consider myself a dedicated player, I follow forums, read up on the game and try to generally be well aware of patch notes and future changes on the pts.
And this is the first time I've heard about an underdog bonus.

If I missed it, I expect a large majority of players did as well.
And just as it was the case with the target caps, some features don't have an effect on player behaviours until they are advertised/revealed to them.

The carrot that needs to be used must be visible in the UI. As loading screen tips and when you look at the campaign summary.
The game needs to show the modifiers when attacking the various factions and explain to players what they stand to gain by working for the benefit of their faction.

This sums up to the same argument you made:
To get the experience to be balanced you have to convince the players to stop all stacking into one faction for an easy win.

I also agree on the faction transferts.
Some people may enjoy only the 7 day campaigns and a free faction transfert for winning players would be the only way for them to experience these changes.
But no paying transferts, it would set a bad precedent for paying services on top of the subscription fee.

Also, it should go only one way: from dominating to underdogs.
Perhaps unlock it at the end of a campaign if the previous campaign had one faction with double the points than either one of the other factions.

Just to quickly address --

Yes, there are low population and low score bonuses already implemented in the scoring for factions on the Alliance War scoreboard. It takes a bit of sampling before the system automatically implements them.

If, for instance, a huuuuuuuge raid of DCs came in and flattened Haderus, turning it blue, they'd get a monstrously large PPH (Points per Hour) due to receiving the low points score bonus (but since Haderus is usualy 1 bar across the board, as it's dead, the system samples it as 'balanced' so they wouldn't get the low population bonus). This would last for as long as they hold the map or until the scores start to get close.

It takes a lot of imbalance for the "Low Population" bonus to kick in, and if there's any point where the populations are close to the same, it won't show up. It's very finicky.

These bonuses have been in since the start and have been utterly ineffective.

Sharee · September 2014

Keron wrote: »

The pop cap, while resolving the issue with pop imbalance immendiately, will kill the game by having casuals leave.

Remember that the problem currently is not overall population, only night-time population. The caps will have no effect except during deep night. Most casuals sleep during deep night.

Casuals are not the type of player who purposely piles on to the winning side to paint a map in his color during the night. Therefore i believe few, if any, casuals would be actually impacted by these caps.

Agrippa_Invisus · September 2014

Sharee wrote: »

Keron wrote: »

The pop cap, while resolving the issue with pop imbalance immendiately, will kill the game by having casuals leave.

Remember that the problem currently is not overall population, only night-time population. The caps will have no effect except during deep night. Most casuals sleep during deep night.

Casuals are not the type of player who purposely piles on to the winning side to paint a map in his color during the night. Therefore i believe few, if any, casuals would be actually impacted by these caps.

Exactly. During prime time, when the triple locks are achieved -- the queues are no different than the status quo.

During off hours, when the two underdog factions die down population wise, the more populous faction also stops replacing its numbers as people start hitting the queue wall.

These players will have to either a) find another activity within game, b) home/guest to a campaign their numbers are needed in, or c) switch to the faction that needs them in that campaign.

Considering that it's their faction stacking that is driving underdog players out of PVP and out of game completely, there is little sympathy for them having to follow one of the three above listed suggestions.

frosth.darkomenb16_ESO · September 2014

Agrippa_Invisus wrote: »

frosth.darkomenb16_ESO wrote: »

The reward only works when it is personal and properly timed with the desired behaviour. And for that, it also needs to be noticeable.

I consider myself a dedicated player, I follow forums, read up on the game and try to generally be well aware of patch notes and future changes on the pts.
And this is the first time I've heard about an underdog bonus.

If I missed it, I expect a large majority of players did as well.
And just as it was the case with the target caps, some features don't have an effect on player behaviours until they are advertised/revealed to them.

The carrot that needs to be used must be visible in the UI. As loading screen tips and when you look at the campaign summary.
The game needs to show the modifiers when attacking the various factions and explain to players what they stand to gain by working for the benefit of their faction.

This sums up to the same argument you made:
To get the experience to be balanced you have to convince the players to stop all stacking into one faction for an easy win.

I also agree on the faction transferts.
Some people may enjoy only the 7 day campaigns and a free faction transfert for winning players would be the only way for them to experience these changes.
But no paying transferts, it would set a bad precedent for paying services on top of the subscription fee.

Also, it should go only one way: from dominating to underdogs.
Perhaps unlock it at the end of a campaign if the previous campaign had one faction with double the points than either one of the other factions.

Just to quickly address --

Yes, there are low population and low score bonuses already implemented in the scoring for factions on the Alliance War scoreboard. It takes a bit of sampling before the system automatically implements them.

If, for instance, a huuuuuuuge raid of DCs came in and flattened Haderus, turning it blue, they'd get a monstrously large PPH (Points per Hour) due to receiving the low points score bonus (but since Haderus is usualy 1 bar across the board, as it's dead, the system samples it as 'balanced' so they wouldn't get the low population bonus). This would last for as long as they hold the map or until the scores start to get close.

It takes a lot of imbalance for the "Low Population" bonus to kick in, and if there's any point where the populations are close to the same, it won't show up. It's very finicky.

These bonuses have been in since the start and have been utterly ineffective.

Thank you for the information. I really had no idea.

With this in mind, my point stands.
These are not implemented incentives as they not only are unknown by the majority, but also never kick in.
They don't even address all issues as they are dependent only on campaign points and give a benefit that is irelevant to most players.
At best, there is a delayed reward once every 7-14-30 days that is disconnected from the players actual impact/contribution.

I know you've read my overall suggestion, as you commented on it, but as you can see I'm trying to address the 3 possible imbalances.
Campaign points, population and territory ownership.

If you fight an enemy that is dominating the campaign you get rewarded, and that has value far beyond the short term as it can cause a snow ball effect on the loosing sides and focus on the top dog until the situation gets resolved.

If you fight an enemy that has, for some reason ,a peak of population. Let's say middle of the night, you get rewarded to counter balance this by fighting back.
Again, the two other factions may have less members loged in, but combined, they compensate for the fluctuation, and everyone involved gets a fun fight.

If you fight an enemy that owns a large ammount of the maps or scrolls, you are effectively fighting a more challenging enemy due to the buffs.
As it is usually the case with more challenging content, you get rewarded for it.
The game follows expectations.

In each case, it is a direct appeal to individual players' greed and they see an immediate reward. It teach players that effort = reward and maintain that expectation in most gameplay situations.
To train a dog, you give it a treat directly after he performs the desired task.

Keron · September 2014

I have to put in a side remark:

Thanks guys. I have yet to see a discussion in these forums with this little flaming/baiting/whining while having participants that are quite far removed from each others position and still see information and opinions evolving with additional information. Just for this, I feel rewarded in taking part in it.

Agrippa_Invisus wrote: »

Sharee wrote: »

Keron wrote: »

...

Remember that the problem currently is not overall population, only night-time population. The caps will have no effect except during deep night. Most casuals sleep during deep night.

Casuals are not the type of player who purposely piles on to the winning side to paint a map in his color during the night. Therefore i believe few, if any, casuals would be actually impacted by these caps.

Exactly. During prime time, when the triple locks are achieved -- the queues are no different than the status quo.

During off hours, when the two underdog factions die down population wise, the more populous faction also stops replacing its numbers as people start hitting the queue wall.

In this aspect I tend to agree with Frosth's point of view that even a small, dedicated 10-player-team will be able to color the map, PvDoor is not that difficult. This means that I doubt the efficiency of a player cap in regards to preventing biased campaigns.

Even if there are some players of every faction online, a dedicated team will make all of a difference. And that then does influence casual players - they see their faction winning and join in, the vicious circle starts anew.

Then you have the "cross over periods", where pop is not yet at maximum universally but players start to join in. This may be only a small period of time, but again - it may be the small period of time a casual player is actually able to play. An example:

I am a so-called "owl". I tend to get up late and stay up late. This is reflected in my working hours. I start work around 10am and finish around 7 or 7.30pm (yes I'm working right now - and hope that no one sees me participating in a game discussion

). Then I have maybe two or three hours worth of game time. When I log on, I can see my faction (EP) locked, DC at two to three bars and AD at one bar.

The dynamic cap will bump me from position ~50 in queue to position ~200 (considering 1 bar equals 50 players). I log off. I do this maybe for two, three weeks, then I would seriously consider quitting.

This is a very special situation and I agree that it will not be the case for many, but it still further reduces player base.

frosth.darkomenb16_ESO · September 2014

Exactly, even 10% difference is enough to color the map.

And not only this, but you also have the night shifts' differences being only a representation of the overall population imbalance.

Fixing the overall population balance fixes the night shifts as well.

Agrippa_Invisus · September 2014

Adding positive reinforcement to reroll and switch to underdogs is not a bad thing and should certainly be implemented along with the dynamic queues. Give people who are homed on a server that is the winning faction free xp boosts, gear, free levels, and free switching. That will help immensely to alleviate the pain of the queues themselves.

But there has to be something to force the balance to happen.

At off peak the 10% additional players is only going to be anywhere from 1-3 additional players. That is not sufficient to paint the map assuming median competency from both sides.

There's nothing wrong about losing because the other side is better/more organized. There is everything wrong with facing hopeless number disadvantages where there is no mathematical probability of surviving the encounter.